Max Payne III The Redemption of Max Payne
by Jed Rhodes
Summary: His life in ruins once again, Max settles down, retires - but his past just can't keep away...
1. Prologue

**This story is set after one ending of Max Payne II.**

**--**

**Max Payne III - The Redemption of Max Payne.**

**Part One - Devils in the Detail. **

**Prologue.**

--

Life. Don't talk to me about life.

Life has been the dealer in the worst game of poker ever played - the life of Max Payne. Me.

My wife and baby daughter were murdered by insane killer junkies. Flash forward three years, and I was framed for the murder of my best friend, and proceed to murder half of the mafia and scumbags of New York. Flash forward again, and I fall in love with a woman who's been hired to kill me, and then she dies too, killed by a man I thought was my friend - before he tries to kill me and I'm forced to kill him first. Everyone I'd known for years was dead. Mona. Vinnie Gognitti. Vladimir Lem. Winterson.

Such is the life of Max Payne.

To make any kind of sense of how somehow, my life was restored, and I found meaning again, flash back two years ago ago, to a little while after the battle that had claimed Vlad's life, Mona Sax's, and Alfred Wodens...

--

It's funny, how things turned out.

Alfred Woden had been more sorry than I had thought for what he had done, for how messed up my life had become because of his actions. So much so in fact that he had left me his house and money in his will. I hadn't cared so much, so I'd sold his manor.

The money I used to pay my hospital bills, and those of Jim Bravura. It was the least I could do. Wintersons son was staying with her parents, and I gave him a lot as well. The least I could do. In return, he'd testified against me in the subsequent trial for her murder. I was exonerated. A few Inner Circle people who's hated Vlad, and were grateful to me for killing him, saw to that.

I had my old apartment fixed. Most of a lifetimes memories were gone, blown up. Nonetheless, a few had survived. Alex's family sent me a copy of the picture of me and him from the good old days. My wife's distant cousins sent me a picture of me and her. They were almost all I needed.

Almost. There was one thing missing. Mona Sax, the woman who had brought me out of the dark hole only to push me into a deeper one with her death, was unrecorded, unlemented, no pictures of her outside of police photographs. I took them, framed them, to remind me of everything I had lost.

I had been fired from the NYPD, Bravura not buying everything. I hated him, but at the same time, I was grateful that he had fired me. No more adventures. No more mysteries. Max Payne finally got to relax.

I hated it.

Life became an endless array of boredom, boredom and more boredom, punctuated by old police friends calling. Even Bravura called, to say hello, tell me he had forgiven me. He asked if I wanted my old job back.

Thanks, but no thanks, I told him. I couldn't go back. I was rich enough not to need to.

That was the life of Max Payne. I could finally shut myself out, stay away from any reminders of my past.

But my past couldn't keep away from me. One day, almost two years after the manor, I heard a knock at my door. I was tempted to ignore it - had I knwon the consequences of my decision to answer then, I would have. But, against my own better judgement, I went to the door, and opened it.

"Payne!"

I stared hard at the man looking at me, and only one thought occured to me.

"Payne? You ok?" Vinnie Gognitti asked.

"You're dead," I told him. "You're dead, Vlad blew you up."

"Yeah, well, that's what _you_ thought..."

--

I invited him in.

"You gonna explain this?" I asked him. This was insane. He'd been blown to kingdom come, ages ago - I had seen the remains.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it," Gognitti replied. "You got a beer?"

"Kitchen," I said numbly. Then it hit me.

"Even if you are alive, why're you here?" He had hated me, and had once tried very hard to kill me. His being here made no sense.

"Well, it's a long story. Pull up a chair."

I shook my head.

"Make it short," I suggested.

"Well," he began, "the Russian had gone up the stairs to talk to you, right? I'm sitting there nervous as hell because I know, as soon as he's finished with you, he's coming to me. He'll blow my freaking head off."

"Get to the part where you end up here, now," I told him impatiently.

"I'm getting to that!" he moaned. "So anyway, I hear a gunshot, then he comes down, and I start beggin for him not to kil me, and he looks at me and says, very clearly, 'why would I kill you, Vincent? You are nothing to me,' and then he disarms the bomb, and gets me out of the costume. Then he says to me, 'but, I think my men need target practice. Run, Vinnie, or you will die.' Then one of his boys cocks his gun, and aims it - so I run, right? Into the funhouse. The bastards come after me, and they're shooting, but I dodge 'em, and run off. Then, the next thing I know, there's a huge explosion behind me, and then I just - well, I run away," he ended sheepishly. I looked at him for a moment.

"What do you want here?" I asked him.

"Well, after that, I went to my apartment - you left me a lot of dead cleaners, Payne, and they left a lot of hardware, so I go off to try to make something of my life."

"And?" I asked, not really getting the importance of me in all of this.

"I made something of my life," Gognitti said. "Took over the Russians place, got a few boys, nothing much - but here's the thing. I figured I owed you, Payne. You saved my ass at the used car lot, even if the Russian did get us after, and I thought, well, I might as well pay him back."

"How?" I asked.

"I found out some information you might be interested in," Gognitti told me. "Some very weird information."

"What information?!" I asked.

"The cleaners are still around," Gognitti growled, would-be-menacingly. "They're being run by someone big, and they're back up to their old stuff - you know, wiping people out, that sort of thing."

"And this interests me why?" I asked.

"You know Jack Lupino's old hotel?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"You left me the phone tapping stuff - I use it to spy on the cleaners calls. Their boss is after you."

I digested this for a moment.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'm freaking sure. You think I'd put my neck out coming here if I freaking wasn't?"

He had a point, so I stood up.

"When are they planning on hitting me?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied, "but it'sa gotta be soon. I don't -"

Suddenly, he was cut off by gunshots from outside.

"That's them!" he yelled, panicky as ever. I grabbed my berreta, the same one that had come with me in 2001, during the Valkyr case.

"Then let's give them a warm welcome," I said, cocking the pistol.


	2. The Familiar Sound

**Chapter Two: The Familiar Sound.**

They were cleaners alright. Lots of them. They had the same old jumpsuits and the same old 9mils and the same old attitudes.

Gognitti had grabbed a gun from my rack - couldn't tell what but it looked like a Colt Commando - and fired like a madman into the cleaners ranks. Cursing, I took careful aim and fired by myself. The familiar sound of gunfire let me slip back, get into the 'zone'. Time seemed to slow down, as the cleaners moved and fell in slow motion...

"Kill 'em! Kill the bastards!" one of the cleaners yelled. I took him out with a bullet to the head, before taking one of his compadres out with three shots to the chest. After a moment of this sort of fighting, all the cleaners were dead.

"Now what?" Gognitti asked.

"That won't be all of them," I said, and edged out of the door. Almost immediately, more gnshots raced down the corridor, and I ducked back inside.

"It isn't all of them," I said. "You hold them off, I'll go call help."

"Help?" he asked. "What kinda help?"

"The Blue kind," I told him, before heading for my phone. I heard more gunshots from the hall, and the sound of a familiar voice, yelling "get out of our neighbourhood, you hoodlums!" It was the voice of the old lady from 305 - then I heard the sound of an AK-47, and her yells ceased. I silently added her to the least of unavenged dead people, and picked up the phone, dialling Bravura.

"Bravura, NYPD," came the old mans voice.

"It's me, Max Payne," I said. "Cleaning suit commando's, attacking my apartment, they're after me."

"Payne? _Cleaners? _Ok, I'll send some units to help you out - hold out 'til we get there."

He hung up just as I heard Vinnie yelling to me. The cleaners were in the door.

"Get down!" I yelled. Vinnie did, as I picked up a pump action from my rack and fired it into the crowd of cleaners. They fell and I fired again. Then they were all dead.

"Fuck!" Gognitti yelled.

"That's one way of putting it," I replied. "Stay here, don't open this door for anyone except the police."

"Got it," he said. I went out of the door. There didn't seem to be any more of them around, but I explored a bit. When the boys in blue finally came, I'd checked around - there was only the one van, no more cleaners.

--

"Payne, he's a wanted criminal!" Bravura yelled at me, from behind his desk.

"So was Mona Sax, yet somehow she was more use against the cleaners than you or any other cop was," I replied cuttingly. Bravura, despite everything, hadn't changed a bit.

"Well - we can talk about Gognitti later - what about the cleaners?"

I explained everything Gognitti had, which didn't come to much, having thought about it.

"Payne, you aren't a cop anymore," he said to me, "but I _could _give you your old job back, so you could sort this out..."

I thought about it, about all the trouble that had come with the badge. Then I realised, trouble came anyway, badge or no.

"Ok then," I said. "Where do I start?"

--

"Payne, there you are!" Gognitti yelled at me. He was sitting at a table in the interrogation room, looking frightened out of his mind. "I was beginning to think you'd left me! Listen, I've been thinking, about these cleaners..."

"Well, so have I," I said, "and I want to know everything you do."

"I don't kknow anything," he lied, badly.

"Bad start, Vinnie," I said. He flinched, remembering the last time I said that to him. "Now, do you want me to do the police brutality thing? 'Cos I will."

"Alright," he said after a moment. "They showed up again a month ago, been causing hell with some mob bosses. I'm mostly legit so it didn't affect me, but I heard rumours. Then, a few months ago, they hit my hotel - the place was smashed up, badly. Next thing I know, my establishments are getting roughed up, and shot to bits, and a thousand other things, and my men are getting massacred. When we founjd out it was cleaners, I tapped the phones, trying to find out what the bastards were up to, only they were up to killing you - so I decided to pay you back the one I owed you."

"Any idea who's behind them?" I asked.

"Nope," he said, "but it's gotta be someone connected to the Russian, it's just gotta be. Hey - it couldn't be the sick fuck, could it...?"

"No," I said, a touch moreosely. He had dragged up memories of the manor again.

"You sure?"

"I saw the body, and I know for a fact that Vlad is dead."

He knew nothing more. I made my excuses and left.

--

The nightmares assailed me again, coming back with a vengeance. All the people who'd died, over the Valkye case and the Cleaners, Alex, the Finitos, Lupino, Mona, Nicole Horn, Alfred Woden, Corcoran, Punchinello, Vlad... they all came, and they haunted me.

Then, I found myself in the Roscoe street station, alone, nobody there but me and the creaking gates. I wandered up the stairs, and found that they men I'd killed there were still there, the bodies rotten and skeletal. They were all there.

Then, as quickly as Roscoe came, it went, and I found myself at the manor, and the dead were there too, rotting away quietly to trhemselves. I turned a corner, and there was Mona, rotting, shambling towards me. I woke up screaming.

I didn't understand who could possibly be after me. Everyone was dead, apart from Gognitti and Bravura. Bravura was too nice, too clean to ever use the cleaners. Gognitti would have let the cleaners kill me if they were his, and he was too much of a wimp to try a stunt like this on me if it was all a bluff.

I thought about it for a long time. Everyone who could possibly do this to me was dead. Who could it be? Who was after me?

I stood up, and went for a walk, heading for the old funhouse.

Despite the fire, it was stll there. Amazingly, Address Unknown was given a new lease of life, and the funhouse was put back together - only to be abandoned again when the revived show was cancelled.

"Mona, where are you when I need you?" I muttered to myself, or maybe I just thought it - it's hard to remember now. I wandered around the abandoned place - everything restored with new voice boxes and everything. After a while, I just sat down and pondered. None of this made sense.

What was going on?


	3. Mona's good twin

**Chapter Three: Mona's Good Twin.**

Eventually, I went to Mona's old apartment. It had been refurbished, but rather than get rid of all her stuff, the people who'd taken the place over put it all in a storage room. I was wondering around, trying to find it, when I heard a noise. Soomeone rummaging around. I drew my gun out slowly, and edged around the corner.

A woman was going through Mona's stuff. She had her back to me, so I aimed the gun and called out "NYPD, don't move a muscle!"

She span around, and I could see she was unarmed, right before I noticed her face.

It was Mona's.

--

**Vinnie.**

_At about that time, apparently, Vinnie Gognitti was going back to what had been Ragnarock, then Vodka, and was now simply Vinnies mansion. I don't know exactly what happened, but I know for a fact that Vinnie ended up in a firefight..._

Vinnie walked into the entrance hall, and looked around. Where were his boys? He drew out his trusty Desert Eagle - the same one he'd once drawn on Payne - and wandered around, trying to find one of his men. Then, as he edged up the stairs, he heard unfamiliar voices coming from upstairs. He sneaked up, trying to find the source of the voices, and stood with his back to the wall, listening.

"You know, I never knew how much I missed this stuff."

"Neither did I, but here we are."

Edging a bit further, Vinnie peeked around the corner and saw his worst fear. Cleaners.

"Where's the little whining son of a bitch, anyway?" one of the men asked the other.

"No idea," his friend replied. "He's gotta be around here somewhere."

"He's not very good at hiring men, is he?" the first cleaner laughed. "We wiped the poor bastards out in ten seconds flat."

"Yeah, well, what can you d? They're all old guys and obese losers, we're highyl trained mercs - wait, did you here something?"

Vinnie froze - his grip on his gun tightened.

"By the stairs," the cleaner said.

"ARRRRRGH!" Vinnie yelled, jumping out and spraying the cleaners with Bullets.

_Vinnie always was stupid, but somehow, the last few years had taught him not to be a coward. _

Vinnie ran out of bullets in hius clip, and the cleaners stared at him in shock. Neither of them had been hit.

"Oh crap," Vinnie said, before diving for cover.

_Unfortunately, he was still an idiot._

_--_

**Max.**

"Mona?" I asked the mystery woman.

"Lisa Sax," the woman replied. "Who's asking?"

"Max Payne," I told her. "Lisa Sax? Lisa _Punchinello_?"

"_Sax_," she said, emphatically. "That bastard tried to kill me, but he couldn't do anything right."

My mind went back to Punchinello manor, to the bed upon which lay a familiar face, blood stains on the bed.

"You were dead," I said.

"Badly hurt, but not dead, not quite." She was smiling, the lopsided grin Mona had sometimes thrown. It must've run in the family.

"You're Max Payne?" she asked.

"Afraid so," I replied, my standard reply to such a question, first used on Mike the Cowboy - before he died that is.

"I've heard about you," she said. "You kneew my sister?"

"Yeah, I did," I said, reluctant to give more indication than that.

"Well," she said, "perhaps you can tell me what bastard killed her then."

I raised an eyebrow. She didn't keep up with the news as well as she might.

"Vladimir Lem did," I said. "But before you go all revengeful, I killed him."

"You killed him?" she said, gaping slightly.

"Yeah. Why, did you want a shot?"

She slapped me.

"You idiot, Vladimir Lem was the person who saved my life! Bastard!" she yelled, and she slapped me again.

"Hey, hey!" I yelled at her, as she moved to slap me again, "he tried to kill me, and he succeeded in killing a lot of friends of mine, not to mention a lot of mobsters and Alfred Woden. He was my friend, and he betrayed me." I felt like crap. She had dragged up the past. "He didn't need to. He didn't have to. But he did."

She stopped trying to slap me.

"What are you doing here," she asked at last. A question I couldn't answer, for a moment, then I smiled at her.

"Fate," I said.

--

**Vinnie.**

_From what I heard, Vinnie was having a whale of a time._

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he yelled, jumping sfrom the gantry, through a door, and into another room. Cleaners were everywhere. His boys were dead. He drew his pistol again, and waited for the three cleaners to burst in. He blasted the first two dead, and the last one was winged. He nonetheless managed to get a shot off, but it missed and Vinnie finished him. He crept out and headed for the next room.

_"That is when you hear the song falling from the sky. Happy yesterday to all, we were born to die..."_

Music from _his_ CD player was blaring. _His_ Scissor Sisters album. Bastards, how dare they touch his stuff. They were tryng to kill him for fucks sake...

"This guy has no taste in music," one of the cleaners said.

"Hey!" Vinne yelled involuntarily, before blanching. "Oh crap..."

The cleaners came out of the door - he shot the first one, but a hail of bullets from an AK-47 rained and he took cover. He reloaded his Desert Eagle and aimed it at the next cleaner, and fired. The cleaner dropped.

_Vinnie Gognitti surprises me, sometimes. His fixation with Captain Baseball-Bat Boy, his coming to me for help... when I got a phone call from Vinnie, I was surprised again._

Vinnie grabbed his cellphone and called Payne's number, which he had been given earlier that night. He waited as the call tone ran.

--

**Max.**

I grabbed my phone as it rang. Lisa had said nothing to me after that.

"Max Payne," I said.

"It's me, Vinnie," came a familiar voice. "Cleaners at the old Ragna Rock club, they're trying to kill me! Help me, Payne!"

"Alright, just hold out, I'm coming," I said. I turned to Lisa.

"I've got to go," I said, "but if you want to talk to me, this is my number."

I gave her my card. She took it and looked at the number.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," I smiled back, and walked off, heading for my car. Music was playing in the distance.

_"This is the land of a thousand words, b__ut it seems so few are worth the breath to say."_

After all this talking, all this boredom, I was almost relieved to be heading back for action. Lisa's appearance was surprising, but if she was anything like her sister, she had a knack for returning from the dead.

_"Except I'll be looking after my own world..."_

My world had been shaken up again. It seemed the old problems, the old people, just couldn't leave me alone. Max Payne, dump recepticle for the world.

_"And you just keep on saving the day."_

Vinnie Gognitti expected me to save his ass, at the old Ragna Rock. The same place I'd saved Vlad's ass from him. Some places just seemed to attract trouble.

_"I'll try to stay but it's in vain when you're far. __I'm on the run to wherever you are..."_

And here I was again, one man, off to save the day from villains and bad guys. Idealism. Nothing I wanted to think about.

I drove off, leaving Lisa alone in her sisters old aprtment.


	4. Quite a history

**Chapter Four: Quite A History.**

As I drove to Ragna Rock, or Vodka, or whatever the hell Vinnie called it nowadays, I was struck by the history the place had. My mid flashed back t the spooky monkey talk of Jack Lupino.

_"I have tasted the flesh of fallen angels..."_

The Flesh of Fallen Angels... what did that mean? It was a recurring theme in the V-Head junkies limbo, the code that no one, not even the best trained psychologists, could crack.

_"I've tasted the devils green blood... it runs in my veins..."_

Lupino had been so high on Valkyr that he'd practically bled the stuff when I finally brought him down.

_"I think he's dead already."_

My mind was on Mona, for the third time that day. I'd never gotten over her death. Some nights, I dreamed dreams that weren't nightmares, where she'd survived, where she'd made it... only for the illusion to shatter moments after I awoke. It broke my heart, every time.

_"Max! 911! Bad guys with big guns!"_

The last time Vinnie had been here when I was, he had been trying to kill Vlad. And now, here I was, trying to rescue Vinnie from death and the hands of Vlad's old crew. The irony wasn't escaping me. Yeah, that building had quite a history.

By the time I got there, Vinnie was nowhere seen, but the evidence of his haphazard gunfighting skills was. Dozens of cleaners and mobsters were lying dead, the cleaners covered in gunshot wounds all over the body - the sign that Vinnie had been kinda desperate, desperate enough to shoot them even when they were dead. But not, I noted, desperate enough to pick up their weapons. I grabbed a shotgun and an AK-47, and moved further along, deeper into the club.

Gunshots were coming from inside, and yells.

"Fuckin' cleaners! C'mon! C'MON!!"

The sound of cleaners dying, and a shotgun clicking and recoiling. And then a mobster ran through a nearby door.

"Max Payne?" he asked, raising a gun and aiming it at me.

"Afriad so," I replied. I couldn't come up with anything more original.

"I'm Donny Munro," he told me. "Bosses best man."

"Gognitti, right?"

"No, Jack Lupino. He's been giving me instructions via seances - of course Gognitti!"

The guy had a sarcastic streak a mile long, and a bad temper, but he was on my side.

"The boss is in the office, pinned down by cleaners. He can't hold out too much longer," Donny told me.

As if on cue, a voice came from the speakers.

"Donny? Tell me Payne is there, I saw his car - Payne! Help! Cleaners, fucking hundreds of cleaners! Donny? Find Payne and tell him to hurry up!"

Donny looked at me pointedly.

"Lead the way," I smiled at him. He njodded and racked his shotgun, before taking of, deeper into the building.

Pretty soon, we got to the gantry, and came under fire almost immediately.

"Rat bastards!" Donny yelled, firing his shotgun into the cleaners below. At that range, it wasn't that effective, but it gave me the chance to get down the stairs and load my Kalashnikov. I aimed, and fired, taking one cleaner down, and that's when they noticed me. A cleaner ran at me, and aimed his pistol at me - but I took him down before he could get to me.

"This way!" Donny yelled from above. I ran up, but he'd already ducked into the room. Judging by the gunfire, he'd run into some more cleaners.

"Die, you bastards!" he was yelling. I swallowed a painkiller, and ran into the room to help him.

Donny was shooting the last of a group of three cleaners.

"Where were you?" he asked. "I heard you were good at this kind o' thing."

"I am," I replied. "As Vinnie will tell you, when we save his butt."

Donny did reply, but ran further into the building, racking his shotgun again. I followed him, and we began the long trek downstairs. When we got there, we saw a bunch of about five cleaners firing in the direction of an upturned table. Vinnie was popping his head up every so often, and firing off a shot with his Desert Eagle.

I took out the first cleaner with my Berreta. Donny shot the second in the back. Vinnie popped up and blew a thirds brains over the wall. the fourth spun and fired at me, clipping my left arm, but I fired back, hitting him in the shoulder.

"We need one alive! I yelled. Donny shot the last one down, but left the one I winged. I picked him up by his collar and looked him in the eye.

"You have the right to shut the hell up. If you chose to give up said right, then I'll make you shut the hell up. Got it?"

He nodded, and I dragged him off. Before I walked out the door, I turned to Vinnie and Donny.

"Keep the place secure," I said. "If you don't, they'll come back, with more men and bigger guns."

"Got it," Vinnie nodded. "And Payne? Thanks, man."

I nodded silently and dragged the cleaner off to my car.

--

"He won't talk," Bravura was saying. "He simply refuses."

"We I.D - ed him, anyway," a young Detective by the name of Carter said. He was Wintersons relpacement in the department - less experienced than her, but also more idealistic, less likely to betray the department. "John McAllister, former military, Sergeant. Dishonourably discharged for larceny."

"We identified several former military people in that group," Bravura added. "And in the bunch that you took out two years ago, together with some known hired killers, and a bunch of former mercenaries."

"Experts," Carter noted.

"Wouldn't surprise me," I said. "When they shed the cleaner outfits the first time, they were all military, used code names and everything."

"Hey, boss?" a young cop put his head through the door. "Reported assault by heavily armed men, in military fatigues, down at the Mall."

""What?" Bravura yelled.

"SWAT's already been called in, sir, but the reports say it_ might_ be those cleaners you were after."

"We'd better go," Carter said.

"Oh, and here's the weird thing," the cop added. "Some people are saying that Mona Sax is among the people the cleaners are attacking."

"Sax? But she's dead!" Carter said.

My heart skipped a beat. Could it be Lisa? Then, my phone started ringing. I answered it.

"Max? It's Lisa!"

"Lisa?" I hissed into my phone. "What's going on? Are you involved in that shootout in the Mall?"

"They're looking for someone," she said. "I don't know who, but it's someone important. They're killing people - dozens of people!"

"Hold on, we're coming," I told her. She cut the connection.

"Who was that?" Carter asked.

"A friend," I said. "Down at the Mall, calloing me to tell me what we already know. The cleaners are there."

"C'mon, Payne!" Bravura yelled at me. "We gotta go!"

We headed for the police van.


	5. More Corpses than at the city Morgue

**Chapter Five: More corpses than at the city morgue.**

When we finally got to the Mall, there were scattered corpses all over the place. Cleaners, out of their skinsuits, lying next to dead SWAT and civilians.

"Jesus," Carter swore, "it's like a fuckin' warzone out here!"

"That's 'cause it is," I said. "The war that the cleaners have been fighting since two years ago."

"Whatever it is, we've gotta get in there and help the civilians out!" Bravura said. "C'mon!"

We ran in, Berreta's at the ready. Bravura suggested we split up, each of us taking a different direction. I took the top floor, and went down the right fork, Carter taking the bottom of the same.

After a while, I noticed one thing that there weren't any more corpses. No civilians, no cleaners, no SWAT.

"Where the hell is everyone?" I muttered to myself.

The answer to that question came in the form of a hail of bullets that tore through the floor. I dove for cover, and took a peek around a corner of bench.

Dozens of cleaners were running around, smashing windows, searching for something. There was something odd about them, as if they were different somehow... I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Freeze, NYPD!" I yelled, aiming my Berreta at them. They responded with another hail of bullets. Time seemed to slow down, and I started shooting. Yells from the cleaners reached my ears.

"It's Payne!"

"Kill him!"

I shot the first two cleaners straight through the head, before rolling and taking a second out. Three more rolled into cover and aimed thier Colt Commandos at me, but I was already picking a grenade up from one of the dead cleaners and throwing it.

"Crap!" one of them yelled, before the grenade exploded and their dead bodies sailed over the railings to the floor below.

"Hey!" I heard a familiar voice yell. "Don't send the bodies down here Payne, I've got enough to handle as it is!"

Carter was in trouble. Two cleaners had him pinned down. I picked up one of the rifles and aimed it, before releasing a hail of bullets. The cleaners died.

"Thanks!" Carter yelled. I went further on, and kept my eyes open.

--

After a moment, I ended up outside a Starbucks, where a bunch of cleaners were holding a guy hostage. Some old guy in a suit was with them, talking to this guy - who was younger, in jeans and a T-Shirt.

"Don't kill me!" the young guy said. He was short, and unimpressive.

"I won't," the old guy smiled menacingly, "if you tell me what I want to know."

"I told you, I don't know anything!"

The old guy sighed.

"If you insist on this, then so be it. Michaels... the knife."

One of the commandos held a knife up and handed it to the old guy.

"Now, are you sure you won't reconsider, John?" the man asked. I took that as my cue to jump out, Berreta aimed.

"NYPD, drop the knife!" I yelled. The old man stared at me for a moment.

"Max Payne," he said. "Well, well, I was expecting you."

"Were you?" I asked. "Glad I made the appointment."

"Yes," the old guy smiled. "It is good to know that you are still on the case."

"Yeah, yeah, drop your knife, and get your goons here to drop thier guns," I ordered him. He ignored me, and turned back to the man.

"You know, I think I might let you go," he said. "Tell your master that Max Payne is back at large."

"Y-yessir," the little guy - John - said. He ran off, and the old guy turned to me.

"Terribly sorry I have to cut this short, Mr Payne," he said, "but I have other engagments to keep. Goodbye."

He ran out the back entrance, and his Commandos took that as the cue to start firing at me. I dicked behind a table and reloaded my Berreta, before standing up and firing back. The first Commando dropped almost instantly, and the other two took cover behind a table. One of them stood up to take another shot at me, but then he fell, as a Desert Eagle blammed near my position. I turned, and there was Lisa, looking for all the world like Mona Sax ressurected. She blew the Commandos away, before smiling at me.

"Hi Max," she grinned. Then she cocked her head - footsteps were coming this way. I heard Carters voice yelling "gunshots, up here! C'mon!"

She turned back to me.

"Bye, Max," she said, before running off. A moment later, Carter ran inside, and aimed his gun around.

"Payne, what happened in here?" he asked me.

Where to start? An old guy, with a bunch of Commandos behind him, who just screamed Inner Circle to me? What about Lisa, who seemed to have followed in her late sisters footsteps? I didn't know where to begin, so I just shook my head at him, and sighed. Another mystery, for another time.

--

At night, my dreams always haunted me. Sometimes I would relive that night, almost seven years ago, when everything had changed. Sometimes, the green nightmare of Valkyr would reassert itself, the stains on my soul coming back. And sometimes, there would be nightmares that made no sense at all... like this one.

I was in my old apartment. There was nothing abnormal about it. Music was playing in the distance, so faint I could barely make it out.

_"I can't decide whether you should live or die..."_

I walked off, out of the door, and found myself in a corridor that belonged to Alfred Wodens manor house. I looked around, and saw the gaping hole in the floor that Vlad had blown. Mona was there, looking at me.

"Hello Max," she said.

"Mona," I replied, in the dream. "Looking good."

"I've looked better," she said. "Lots better."

"I guess," I replied. "Look, we need to -"

"Talk about my sister, yeah," she said. "Look, you know full well, I'm not real, right?"

"Yeah," I told her. "I know."

"And that talking to me is basically talking to yourself, right?"

"Yeah."

"Exactly," she said, nodding, looking satisfied. "So there's really no point."

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"Exactly."

Then I turned to the Panic room. Alfred Woden came out.

"The man with all the answers," I said as he came. "I suppose you're not gonna help either."

"On the contrary Mr Payne, I'm going to help as best I can - given my nature as an unreal creation of your mind."

He smiled at me.

"I suppose," I began, "that you can't tell me whether that old guy belongs to the Inner Circle, can you?"

"I'm afriad not," Woden said.

"My dreams always come up with explanations for something," I said. "I remember dreaming how Vinnie died, how Vlad got shot..."

"That, Mr Payne, was your subconscious creating a possible scenario - and Mr Gognitti isn't dead, so obviously your subconscious was mistaken there."

I nodded in comprehension.

"So," I said. "If you represent my subconscious, start telling me some _ideas_."

He rolled over to me, closer than before.

"The Commandos you fought in the Shopping Mall, Mr Payne, were not the same kind of Commandos that you fought at Gognittis mansion," he told me. "You know as much yourself of course, but might I draw you attention to four years ago, when you fought the mercenaries at the Deep Six?"

"Yeah? What of 'em?"

"They're the same kind of mercenary," Woden told me. "Right down to the Colt Commandos. If I was to hazard a guess, considering my nature as an -"

"Unreal creation of my mind, yeah."

"I would hazard a guess that they are a sort of standardized private army belonging to the Inner Circle. Nicole Horne used them, as did I when I faked my own death."

"Which you didn't do very well, I might add."

"It wasn't really me, so it's a moot point."

"So your telling me that there are two groupsd of balaclava wearing Commandos out there?"

"I'm theorising. That's all either of us can do."

A noise sounded in the distance.

"Ah, that would be your cue to wake up Mr Payne," Woden smiled. "Beep."

And then, I shot awake. I was lying in my old bed. Nothing was wrong.

And now I had a theory.


End file.
